Betty Crocker Knows How to E-mail

I love the Betty Crocker e-mails.  I know I’m not the target, and I’m mostly a meat and potatoes cooker, but the Betty Crocker e-mails make my mouth water.

Here’s what Betty does better than any other e-mail I receive:

• It is timely.  Food is related to the seasons.  It all makes sense to me.
• Great photography.  I know we all have cameras in our phones, but what we all don’t have is the eye and patience to really do photography right.
• Short, poignant copy.
• Always include a valuable coupon.
• Ideas.  Lots of ideas.
• Usually have a contest of some kind.
• The e-mail comes on a regular basis, but not too often.
• It is colorful, bright and looks fun.

What don’t I like:

• It’s not humanized.  They have a perfect opportunity to create an iconic character.
• It is not interactive.  I want to talk with Betty.
• The subject line sometimes looks like spam and not my Betty Crocker e-mail I requested.

The real problem is that my food never looks like it does in the photographs—those advertising people.  The best part of the Betty Crocker e-mail is that it really sells its products without cramming it down my throat.  And that is an art and a science, just like cooking.

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How’s Your Inbox?

In the old days, we would talk about mailbox clutter.  We hadn’t seen anything yet.  E-mail in-boxes are chock-full of every kind of message from legitimate to the bizarro. 

It’s not the physical space that is the problem, it is the “mental” space that electronic clutter is taking up.  The lines of e-mails can seem daunting.  Much more daunting than a handful of mail.

How do you bust through the e-clutter?  You use many of the same techniques that work for regular advertising: clear differentiations, selling benefits, relevance to your target audience and on and on.  But here are few other techniques that might help get that e-mail opened and read.

• If you can, use a person’s name in the “From” line
• The subject line needs to include a real benefit to the person receiving the e-mail.
• Outlook may require you to download photos in an e-mail, so make sure you include embedded copy that will entice people to download the photos.
• Start your e-mail with a clear, benefit-laden statement so that people know if they want to continue or not.  It needs to be short.
• Have a clear goal for your e-mail marketing.  If the goal is to drive people to your website, make sure you have that call to action high in the e-mail, don’t wait until the end.

There’s no magic clutter-buster.  It takes basic, sound marketing techniques to thrive in the sea of marketing messages in your in-box, mailbox or your TV box.

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